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Social commerce, fact or fiction: infographic

Social commerce is going to be big in 2012 – or at least that’s what everyone keeps saying.

So why aren’t we all doing our clothes shopping on Facebook and tweeting pictures of all our latest purchases?

Social marketing company Argyle Social spoke to 566 online retailers ranging from big brands to niche sites to find out how the social commerce revolution is taking shape.

The results indicate that retailers have been somewhat slow on the uptake, with only 17% featuring products on their Facebook page and just 4% enabling check-out functionality.

Furthermore, less than a quarter (23%) of those surveyed offered users deals through Twitter, while 29% featured deals on Facebook.

Separate research we conducted with Toluna shows that 70% of consumers who follow brands on Facebook do so because they want to receive special offers, so the respondents to Argyle Social's survey appear to be misjudging what consumers expect in return for engaging with them through social media.

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Comments (2)

Tyrone Banton

In my opinion, I think this portrays an accurate picture of social commerce today. I think social commerce is a great idea for brands to interact with the consumer by showing catalogues of their stock enabling the consumer to comment on the items they like and share them with their friends. However when it comes to actually processing an transaction through a social platform, it becomes tainted with a fear of bank details being taken or held by a third party without the permission of the consumer, which puts off the consumer and forcing them to go the brand’s website directly to purchase an item. In my opinion, I believe it’s the trust factor that is slowing down social commerce.

If all the businesses and brands tries to build the personal relation with the customers and with other people and if get their trust then it will be more helpful to get more sales from the social media. So still we can not say that social commerce be totally helpful for the business or can get more sales through the social media participation.

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